Real-Life Haunted Houses? Why People Buy Murder Homes

From Lizzie Borden’s Victorian home to the Amityville Horror House, properties with a history of murder or suicide carry a stigma. Occasionally that stigma is so horrific that a site might be razed, but months, years or even decades after the crime scene tape has been removed, many “murder houses” continue to be bought, sold or rented. But who’s buying the homes with such dark histories?

The answer might include budget-minded homeowners, investors seeking a good deal, paranormal enthusiasts, individuals drawn to dark history or simply people who don’t care about what happened in the past.

Murder houses exist all over the country and come on the market more often than one might think. Examples exist coast to coast.

In late 2025, a San Francisco family of four died by murder-suicide in their three-bedroom, two-bath house on Monterey Boulevard. The house was under foreclosure when the mother killed her husband and their two daughters before taking her own life. In April 2026, the home sold for $2.2 million, $700,000 over asking price.

In October 2023, the four-bedroom, three-bath Fresno, Calif., home where Dale Ewell, his wife, Glee, and their daughter, Tiffany, were found shot to death on Easter Sunday in 1992 sold for nearly $600,000. The Ewells’ son, Dana, and his friend were later arrested and convicted of the triple homicide. Dana was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole and is incarcerated at California’s Corcoran State Prison.

The Long Island, N.Y., home where serial killer Joel Rifkin likely murdered and dismembered some of his 17 victims—and where he lived with his mother and sister from 1989 until his 1993 arrest—hit the market in the summer of 2026. The four-bedroom, two-bath house in East Meadow, N.Y., was originally listed for $799,999. The price was reduced by $20,000 after a couple of weeks on the market. As of press time, a sale appears to be pending.

According to the National Association of Realtors, each state has its own disclosure laws governing what information Realtors are required to disclose about a property’s history, including deaths, murders, suicides or alleged hauntings on the property, and definitions of what constitutes stigmatized property.

“Disclosure laws vary widely state to state,” Liane Jamason, licensed real estate broker and owner of Corcoran Dwellings, in St. Petersburg, Fla., tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “There are some states where you would have to disclose something like murder, and there are others, like Florida, where you really don't have to disclose anything unless it materially affects the value of the property in some kind of way.”

Jamason explains that Florida aims to “protect sellers who say nothing about a death on the property, but that protection only covers the death itself, not any damage it left behind.”

“If a death caused actual physical harm to the house—blood-soaked subflooring, fire damage, structural issues, that's no longer a stigma, that's a defect, and Florida's separate disclosure law requires sellers to reveal known defects that materially affect the property's value,” she continues.

Jamason says that the timeframe for California’s disclosure laws spans just three years, while Alaska and South Dakota just cover the most recent year; some states only require sellers to disclose such information if asked directly.

“Under Illinois law, a stigma like that carries no legal duty to disclose on its own, but if it left a physical trace on the house, the calculus changes, same as Florida,” Jamason says. “Illinois is actually the state where one of the most notorious cases in the country happened, a father who murdered his six children in their Rockford home back in 1978.”

In January 1978, Simon Peter Nelson murdered his six children, ages 3 to 12, and the family dog in their home in the historic Churchill’s Grove neighborhood in the center of Rockford, Ill. The murders shocked the community and the nation. Nelson pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to six counts of murder, but the jury rejected his argument and convicted him of six counts of murder. Although he could have received the death penalty, he was sentenced to six concurrent 100- to 200-year prison terms. Nelson was denied parole 19 times and remained a prisoner until his death in 2017 at age 85.

Since then, the house has sold a handful of times, sometimes occupied by renters, other times, by owners. The Nelson house went back on the market May 1, 2025, and Nate Jordan, chief investment officer of JPM Rockford, jumped at the chance to buy it.

“I happen to own a handful of houses in the neighborhood and on this exact street; I love this area,” Jordan tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “The day it came online, I put an offer in. The realtor did disclose that this house has some history to it, and that was totally fine with us. We understood that history. From our perspective, it was everything we needed it to be.”

Jordan wasn’t the only one who wanted to buy the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath, 2,168-sq-ft. Dutch Colonial house that was built in 1910. It listed for $95,000, a bargain for the sought-after neighborhood, and the seller received multiple offers over asking price.

“We expected there to be at least one other offer, but to have three or four counteroffers definitely shocked me,” says Jordan, who closed the deal in about a week for $115,000. After several months updating and renovating while retaining historic details like built-ins and some of the original bay windows, it was ready for occupants.

Buying a notorious property can be risky.

“Depending on what happened in a home, especially if it’s gruesome, buyers need to consider that it could affect future resale for many years to come,” Jamason advises. “But if it’s a very popular neighborhood in a location with low inventory, maybe [the history] isn’t going to affect it. But if it's in a town with lots of inventory and there's still a strong stigma about it, that could certainly affect the value for many years.”

Jordan has reason to be optimistic. In September 2026, Rockford was again named the nation’s hottest housing market by Realtor.com. Rockford’s median single-family home price is $270,000, while the national median sales price for existing single-family homes was $422,700 as of September 2026.

He also believes that because the murders occurred nearly half a century ago, the notoriety isn’t as worrisome as if they’d happened in recent memory.

“It happened in the ‘70s, when most people in our rental base might not even been 5 or 10 years old, or even alive,” Jordan says. “But we disclosed the history, even if it wasn't top of mind to [potential] renters. The renter that we have in there now is a wonderful woman. She already knew about the house, and that actually attracted her to rent that house. She liked the fact that it had such a history in that it was renovated well.”